and First Lady
Nancy Reagan with a group at NBC's taping of its "Christmas in Washington" special in the Pension Building in Washington, D.C. (1982). Left to right: NBC News anchor Roger Mudd, CBS News reporter
Eric Sevareid, entertainer
Dinah Shore, actress
Diahann Carroll, actor and musician
John Schneider, President Ronald Reagan, First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor
Ben Vereen, and singer
Debby Boone. After the war, Sevareid continued to work for CBS. He had begun his own program,
Eric Sevareid and the News, on June 27, 1942, on CBS; it ran for five minutes, starting at 8:55 (
ET) on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1946, he reported on the founding of the United Nations and then penned
Not So Wild a Dream (
University of Missouri Press, 1946). The book, whose title comes from part of the closing passage of
Norman Corwin's radio play
On a Note of Triumph, appeared in eleven printings and became one of the primary sources on the lives of the generation of Americans who had lived through the Great Depression, only to confront the horrors of World War II. In the 1976 edition of the book, Sevareid wrote, "It was a lucky stroke of timing to have been born and lived as an American in this last generation. It was good fortune to be a journalist in Washington, now the single news headquarters in the world since ancient Rome. But we are not Rome; the world is too big, too varied." The interview was not broadcast over CBS but instead appeared in
Look magazine. Those who disagreed with his views nicknamed him "Eric Severalsides." Sevareid recognized his own biases, which caused some to disagree with him vehemently. He said that as he had grown older, he had tended to become more conservative in foreign policy and liberal in domestic policy. == Personal life ==